THE TRIBUNE'S VIEW

Tuesday

Aug 26, 2008 at 12:01 AM

HENRY J. WATERS III

The downtown Twilight Festival has been one of Columbia's most popular events, but it will end this year. Special Business District Director Carrie Gartner says other activities have developed downtown and continuing oversight of the festival takes too much time and effort from her two-person staff.

Merchants seem ready. Some complain the crowds don't help business or that they even hurt because shoplifting is a problem.

However, the main reason for closing the festival is its changed atmosphere. It started and remained for years a family fun time largely for kids. Lately it has developed into a sort of quasi-rumble with unsavory crowds of teenagers roaming the streets. The last time I was there, the only place primarily for family fun was Flat Branch Park. The unfortunate element milling about the business district is enough to dissuade other visitors and make merchants uneasy.

Sad to say, downtown on festival night is not the only place where potentially unruly teens make life miserable for the general public. We also hear about occasional trouble at the mall.

On KFRU radio, Monday morning host David Lile said he was "very uncomfortable" as he tried to navigate a football "jamboree" at Hickman High School on Friday night. He estimated a crowd of 300 teens packing hallways, using foul language and not letting fans get by. After he left, he learned police had been called to the scene because one young man was brandishing a handgun.

Will this sort of thing cause high school games to be moved to an afternoon time slot, as St. Louis schools have had to do because violence is less likely in daylight hours?

Psychologists could explain why young quasi-gangs collect in public places. No doubt it has something to do with developing a feeling of power among people who lack self-esteem. For whatever reason, it ruins the collective public-place experience for everyone else. Maybe that's part of their motivation. They will show the rest of us.

So police must arrive to control the misbehavior, a treacherous situation for a relatively few armed officers who sometimes must use physical restraint, leading to subsequent charges of police brutality. One wonders whether Tasers might be better tools to carry into such situations than clubs or guns.

Meanwhile, teen crowds are taking too much public fun off the streets, but the rumbles are not really the kind law enforcement can prevent, at least not yet. The teenagers make us "uncomfortable" but not threatened to the point we can call in the police. It's just enough to send us safely off into quieter places.

When people do not feel safe in their most public places, the city is getting sick. Downtown Columbia is a vibrant, developing place. Let's keep it open, safe and fun.

Henry J. Waters III, Publisher, Columbia Daily Tribune

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.